that she watched them in church." 

 Sandy was showing signs of interest. He sat up.  "What did they say about you?" 

 "Flora said I was a 'nice bit lassock,' but Mrs. Johnnie said,"—Christina could not bring herself to tell the humiliating truth—"she said I wasn't like the rest," she finished falteringly. 

 Sandy was beginning to wake up to the fact that Christina was in distress. Why any human being should worry about her appearance was something far beyond Sandy's comprehension, but he could not endure to see Christina worried. He caught up a stone and shied it across the sunny tangle at an old Crow perched on a tall black stump. 

 "Sugar," he declared.  "Who cares for what Mrs. Johnnie says? She looks like our old brindle cow herself. Duke Simms says she's got chilblains on her temper." 

 His stormy attack upon the enemy proved very bracing to the one who had been so recently overthrown by her. 

 "But the Grant girls said so too," she added, searching for more comfort. 

 "Just as if they knew," scoffed Sandy.  "They're a lot of old rainbows, Duke says they are. Looks don't matter anyhow. It don't get you on any faster in school." 

 Christina, much encouraged, reflected upon this aspect of the case. 

 "I don't care," she decided courageously, making a new resolve, that had nothing to do with hair or complexion.  "I'm going to study awful hard at school and beat everybody in the class, and then I'm going to college some day and be a lady. You'll just see if I don't. And it'll be far better to be clever than to be good-lookin', won't it, Sandy?" 

 

 That was just eight years ago, and now on her nineteenth birthday Christina was calling to mind with some amusement the humiliation of that day, and with some discouragement, that the high resolve of that occasion was far from being realised. 

 She came up the path from the barn, where the rays of the early sun made rosy lanes between the pink and white boughs of the orchard. For Christina had been born in the joyous May-time, and the whole farm was bedecked for the occasion. She was tall and straight and carried her two pails of milk with easy grace. The light through the orchard boughs touched her fair hair and made it shining gold. Her 

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